NAT TURNER REBELLION REMEMBERED! August 21 will be the 181st anniversary of the epic Rebellion

On Tuesday, August 21st, the People's Organization for Progress and the Friends of Nat Turner Park will cohost their 3rd annual observation of the Nat Turner Rebellion at Nat Turner Park, located on Muhammad Ali Avenue (near Irvine Turner Blvd and Bergen Street), in Newark.

It will take place at 6:30p.m.

It will be the 181st anniversary of the epic Rebellion.

On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner, a minister among slaves, led what is without doubt the most renown slave rebellion in the bloody history of the United States! On that day, those revolutionaries began an armed assault on area plantations in Southampton, Virginia, that produced over 60 casualties of the slave master class! Although it was militarily put down after several days, and although it led to a worsening of what was already the world's most repressive slavery experience, it sent shockwaves throughout the world and revealed to ruling circles that slavery was no longer the invincible enterprise as they believed previously.

Serious historians also say that this particular insurrection did more to create a split within American ruling circles over the continued viability of the institution more than any other action or combined actions.

This observation also marks the anniversary of the park's renaming after Turner, something that springs from Newark's Black Power history. Newark not only elected the African-American mayor on the East Coast after its own epic rebellion, it was the first city to name city institutions and streets after local and national African-American heroes, beginning with the bold renaming of South Side High School to Malcolm X Shabazz High School in 1972.

"We not only have to honor our heroes with these renamings," said Lawrence Hamm, the organization's founding chairman.

"We have to institutionalize a heroic consciousness so that it makes a difference in the contemporary life of the community," he finished.